


No Light No Light

by paperxcrowns



Category: Batman (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, I'm giving myself the tim and damian friendship we deserve, References to Depression, Romani Dick Grayson, Slice of Life, Tim Drake Has Depression, Tim Drake Has Issues, Tim Drake Has Mental Health Issues, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, as a treat, but they're there, does this count as slice of life?, most of the romantic relationships are implied, no editing we die like robins, probably, there's not real plot so, yeah he doesn't have a fun time in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28814670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperxcrowns/pseuds/paperxcrowns
Summary: Some days, Tim feels like he's never going to be okay again.
Relationships: Roy Harper/Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent
Comments: 9
Kudos: 185
Collections: consider this your oscar





	No Light No Light

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes, self care is spending the whole day cleaning your room

Oh hey, I had a night I had a day

I did one million stupid things

I said one billion foolish things

I'm not okay, I got a baseball bat beside my bed

To fight off what's inside my head

To fight off what's behind my meds

\- It's Alright, Mother Mother

* * *

Tim was probably getting worse.

Probably.

It's been two weeks. Maybe. Time was a construct. But he estimated it had been about two weeks, and he'd spent more days unable to go further than his desk chair than actually going out and being a functioning human. 

His room was a mess. He hadn't opened his closet in forever but he was sure it was empty of clothes, all of them dirty and strewn across the floor and bed and piled up on his chair. He was stuck in a ruthless cycle of feeling the urge to get up and clean his room and then actually seeing his room and being immediately discouraged.

There was a soft knock on the door and Tim knew it was Bruce. He could tell who was at the door based on their knocks, now.

"Come in," he mumbled.

"Chum?" Bruce said, opening the door. "It's me. I was just wondering if you were up for lunch."

Tim frowned. Lunch? Was it that late already? He'd barely woken up. 

"Would you like anything at all?"

Tim blinked at the ceiling. If he stared hard enough, it started swirling.

"Water?" he asked, clearing his throat to force the sleep out of his voice.

He hated dry swallowing pills, and his doctor had recommended he take his fluoxetine in the morning. Bruce's eyes landed on the orange pill bottle and he nodded. 

"When you feel up to it, come down?" he asked, pausing in the doorway.

Tim made a noncommittal sound, not quite yes, but not quite no. Bruce didn't look satisfied, but he nodded and shut the door, plunging Tim's stale room into darkness once again. Tim probably should open a window at some point.

He rolled over and closed his eyes, a wire squeezing his heart painfully. Not even a second later, the door sprang open and slammed into the wall, making Tim jump in surprise. 

"What the--" 

"Timothy, I require your assistance," Damian said, standing in the doorway in a green hoodie, one of his katanas clutched in his hand.

"With what?" Tim yawned, letting himself collapse back down into his pillow, slightly damp with sweat and tears. Great.

At least not looking directly at Damian avoided having bright afternoon light stab his eyes and feed his growing headache.

"Todd deemed it funny to bring all my furniture up to the roof while I was training this morning," Damian sniffed. "And you are the only one competent enough to help me get back at him."

Tim squinted at Damian, knowing for a _fact_ that he'd done something to invoke Jason's wrath. Normally Tim would have gladly agreed, never one to pass up humiliating Jason and Dick on any day, but it required effort, and right now, Tim didn't think he had enough energy to muster the ability to _exist._ Life would be so much easier if he were a ghost. Fucking corporeal form. 

He groaned. "How 'bout you just get Cass to take you to that falafel place you like? Or literally anything else?"

Damian's lips tugged downwards. It occurred to Tim he hadn't seen Damian in-- a long time. He was too tired to try calculate how many days it had been.

"How's WE doing alone?" he asked, practically humming the words out. 

He heard the door shut and soft footsteps padding closer and the sound of a window opening. 

"I know things are not doing well with you, but that is not excuse to let your room smell like a trash dump," Damian huffed out, his voice lacking its usual vitriol. "And WE is doing much better than you, so I do not see why your are preoccupying yourself with that."

Tim grinned sloppily at Damian. "Was that a compliment? I feel so loved."

Damian didn't glare at Tim. He was standing by the window, in Tim's line of sight, and he could see the way the line of his lips tightened as he took in his room. The bad days had just gotten more frequent since Bruce came back, which shouldn't even surprise Tim, not with how much stress he'd put upon himself for literal months almost nonstop. Paired with near death experiences every day, this was bound to happen. It had never been _this_ bad before, and Tim certainly hadn't expected....this. 

"Hey, I know how to deal with this," Tim said. "Don't beat yourself up too much, it's all me right now. There's not much you can do."

He was glad Damian had finally stopped treating him like he didn't belong. Sure, it had taken months after Bruce came back for the animosity to fully fall away, but it didn't matter to Tim. Damian wasn't actively seeking out the best way to slip cyanide in his food anymore, and he even sought out his company. Probably because Tim liked silence and Damian couldn't concentrate on drawing if there wasn't complete and utter silence in a room, but Tim was still going to count it as a bonus.

And the two of them messing with Jason and Dick every time the opportunity arose also helped. Sometimes Duke joined in. _Then_ the real fun began. 

Damian turned to Tim. "Tomorrow we are cleaning your room, Timothy," he snapped. "Whether you want to or not. And then you are helping me get back at Todd."

"You could put an anthill in his bed," Tim suggested, drawing the covers up to his chin to keep out the chilly breeze that blew from the window. "make sure they're fire ants, though. Much more fun."

Damian scowled. "Knowing Todd, he will shoot at them. _No."_

Tim snorted. "Fine. Tomorrow. Now let me hang out with my dearest friend Sadness."

* * *

The next day Tim could safely say that he felt like shit. 

He felt a little better. He actually felt like he could go downstairs to get a snack. God he was _starving._ He hoped Alfred would be willing to make him waffles, because he was craving waffles and a _lot_ of them. 

He rolled over and sat up, stretching. He shook out a pill from the orange box and swallowed it with water he'd asked Alfred to bring him last night. He frowned at the cold tea sitting on the nightstand. Gross.

 _He_ was gross. His hair was tangled and greasy and his body felt sticky with sweat. He needed a refreshing shower. Or a bath. He checked his phone, ignoring the dozens of missed calls and unanswered texts and squinted at the brightness. 8:27. Not bad. He stood up and stretched once more, ignoring his desire to just lay in bed and do nothing, and trudged to the bathroom, still trying to decide on bath or shower.

In the end Tim took a bath. On a whim, he filled the bathtub with water and every single bath bomb that were stocked in his bathroom and even took the time to light that stupid scented candle Steph had gotten him for Christmas that smelled wonderfully of cinnamon. 

The hot water and bubbles felt so wonderful against his muscles, chasing away the cramps and the feeling that his bones were made of Jell-O and his skin of paper. It took a while to brush out every knot, and to scrub away the last remaining sensation of unease from his skin, but it was worth it. Tim felt so much better. He never wanted to get out of the bath. 

He eventually did when he dozed off and snapped back to reality only to realize the water had gone from lukewarm to cold. He quickly got out and got dressed in the only clean clothes he'd found in his closet-- thankfully, as Tim didn't feel like wearing dirty clothes and _definitely_ didn't feel like doing his laundry at the moment. 

It was two hours later that he found himself standing in his room, the window open and the curtains drawn but the blinds still half shut, taking in the mess, trying to decide with what to start with. 

His eyes caught his bed. His bed that he hadn't left in much too long. That had been soaked with sweat and tears. The bed was a safe place to start.

Tim quickly pulled the pillows out of their casings, then the cover, and then the mattress, pulling them all in a pile away from the dirty clothes, in a little corner and promising to take them downstairs at some point that day.

He felt surprisingly energized. Maybe not the "laugh and run around and scream at the top of his lungs" energized, but definitely the "clean your room in one day" energized. That was good, because he _was_ going to clean this room in one day. 

He exhaled, starting on making a single pile of the dirty clothes strewn on every surface of his room. He only paused and frowned when he noticed a plate with an uneaten sandwich, not quite remembering which one this was. Alfred had brought up so many plates-- and Tim had kept the majority of them. He was going to be making quite a lot of trips downstairs today.

* * *

Dick was the first to notice Tim. Him and Steph were currently the only ones upstairs, and everyone else was sitting at the kitchen table. So when Dick heard footsteps approach, he looked up expecting to greet Steph. He definitely wasn't expecting to see Tim walk in wearing an oversized Wonder Woman T-shirt that could only belong to Jason and a pair of running shorts. He also hadn't expected Tim to look-- well definitely _not_ like how he had just earlier this morning. 

"I'm reorganizing my bookshelf," he said, effectively catching the attention of everyone at the table. "And I don't know how to organize it."

Jason raised an eyebrow. "By color."

Damian made a face at Jason. "Alphabetically, obviously." He turned his eyes to Tim. "Don't you _dare_ order it by color."

Tim grinned. "Thanks guys!" He turned and walked right out.

They all sat there in shocked silence for a bit, and Dick tried his best to ignore the fact that this is probably the first time he's seen Tim smile in maybe two weeks. This was also the first time he'd left his room without prompting from Alfred or Bruce or himself.

Damian reacted first. "He's going to order it by color," he said sullenly, stabbing a blueberry with his fork.

Jason scoffed. "Of course he is. It's gonna look _sick."_

"There is only one correct way to organize your books, and it is _not_ by color." Damian pointed his fork at Jason, the blueberry still skewered onto a prong.

Duke glanced at Jason. "Sorry man, the gremlin's right. What if you have a book series and they're different colors?"

Jason shrugged, eyes focused on the slice of bread he was currently shredding into a dozen tiny pieces. "That's just bad planning on the author's part. They should've known their books would be organized by color."

"Tim's cleaning his room?" Bruce asked in a hushed tone.

Dick's eyes flickered to where Tim had been standing a few minutes prior.

"Yes," Damian replied. "I told him yesterday I would force him to do it today if necessary. It...turns out I do not need to."

Dick rubbed his hand in Damian's hair gently, smiling at him, Damian nodding slightly back at him.

"Little brother," Cass said, smiling brightly.

A thin smile stretched across his lips. 

Duke glanced at the doorway nervously. "Should we-- help him?" he asked.

"No," Jason said. "This is his thing. He needs the control. He'll ask if he needs help." His eyes landed on Dick. "If he tries to give up-- I don't care, just force him to do it. He'll need it."

"Where are _you_ going?" Bruce asked, eyebrows raised.

" _I_ happen to have a museum date today." 

Jason stood up, taking his plate and cup with him on his way to the kitchen. Dick smiled, knowing that Bruce was gonna hate finding out that "museum date" wasn't romantically staring at paintings while holding hands in Jason's book. No, for Jason and Roy, "museum date" meant stealing a few priceless paintings to sell on the black market while holding hands.

Dick was just happy Jason had someone like Roy in his life. Even if it was to spend the day stealing art, but that was forgivable. 

* * *

Tim had settled on color. He wanted to see a rainbow of books staring at him. It was more inviting and fit his aesthetic. It had taken _hours,_ taking out every book and throwing them in a pile and then rooting out different colors and having to rearrange all the time, but he'd done it. He'd even strung the fairy lights piled in a corner of his desk across the shelves to make it look a little better. _Now_ it looked Instagramable. 

He was just starting to pile up the clothes he would bring down to the washing machine when someone knocked at the door. 

"Yeah?" he asked.

Damian opened the door holding a plate piled with rice and salmon. Tim had almost forgotten his earlier hunger, but the food didn't look appetizing. 

"Pennyworth told me to bring this up to you," Damian said, taking in the bookshelf and the somewhat cleaner floor. "I see you're being true to your word. Maybe your room will stop looking like a cave by tonight."

Tim smiled. "Ha ha, yeah maybe." He glanced at the plate. "Set it on the desk. I'm not-- hungry."

Damian gave him a disbelieving look, and Tim didn't feel like defending himself. He wasn't hungry anymore. Maybe later he'd get a snack or something. 

Tim brushed the sleeves of Jason's shirt back up his elbows, trying to roll them up, but they kept unrolling. He didn't even remember when he stole that shirt, but it was soft and clean and Wonder Woman was badass and he definitely needed badass right now. 

He tripped over a forgotten shoe and swore when he almost fell an split his skull open on his bedside table. There was so much shit on the floor, God _damn._ This impromptu spring cleaning was long overdue, clearly. 

* * *

It was late afternoon when Dick decided to make himself tea and maybe bother someone until they agreed to watch anything with him. He was bored, and he honestly didn't care what he did as long as it kept him occupied for a while. Him and boredom rarely went well together, and Dick had long since accepted that. Which sucked for him because boredom was common, and for everyone around him because he bothered _them_ when he was bored. 

Maybe there was even remaining Halloween candy somewhere in the pantry that he could steal.

He entered the kitchen, still expecting it to be empty since Alfred had gone out to the store to stock up not even ten minutes ago, but was surprised to find Tim there, crouched in front of the cabinet by the sink, rummaging and grumbling about messy rooms and mold. Dick stood there, still not used to seeing Tim barefoot in shorts and an oversized shirt instead of in dirty sweatpants and a rumpled shirt and anywhere near the kitchen.

Finally, Tim pulled out a trash bag with a triumphant yell and shot up, startling Dick.

He froze when he turned around. "Oh," he said, calming down immediately. "Hi, Dick. Wasn't expecting you here."

Dick blinked. "I can see that." He glanced at his empty mug. "I was making tea?"

Tim smiled. "I'd love some! Thanks, Dick."

Tim leaves Dick standing in the empty kitchen. He feels something odd in his chest, a warmth, but smothered by a deep sadness. he hasn't seen Tim this full of life in-- in too long. And he just had no idea just how much he'd missed Tim from before Bruce died. Tim from before their fight. Tim from before his months _missing,_ where Dick was sick with worry that he'd let his kid brother go off and _die_ somewhere. His eyes burned and he buried his face in his hands, resting his elbows on the kitchen island.

He wasn't sure how long he just stood there, letting tears just drip silently, trying staunch the crying, until he eventually cried himself dry and gave himself a brand new headache to top everything off.

He sniffled a bit, wiping his eyes, reminding himself to spend more time with Tim, and finally got started on the tea he was supposed to be making. Maybe Duke will agree to watch Gordon Ramsay with him. Dick needs something to cheer him up.

* * *

Damian hadn't seen Tim much all day. Only occasionally, when they crossed path in the hall as Tim brought down trash bags or piles of dirty clothes. He'd sneaked peeks into his room, amazed at the difference and at how dedicated Tim was to getting it cleaned today. It looked nothing like how it had this morning, and Damian felt warmth blossom in his chest. 

He knew there wasn't much he could do to really help, but seeing Tim feel better calmed the guilt clawing up his throat. He'd been ruthlessly attacking training dummies in the Batcave, going through simulations and even sparring with Cass and Duke before Alfred sent Dick to get them for dinner. 

Damian wiped his face with his towel and pulled on Duke's cardigan and following Dick out of the Cave.

"Dude, that's _mine,"_ Duke complained, jogging after Damian down the hall.

"I am aware," he replied. "I have no intention on keeping it."

It was December and the Manor was too cold to walk in without long sleeves, but Damian didn't want his hoodie's thick fabric to stifle him too much after a long workout. Duke was shivering.

"You should get yourself a jacket, Thomas."

Duke scowled. "Oh, har, har, very funny. Screw you, kid."

Duke stuck his tongue out at Damian in a brilliant show of his maturity before storming off up the grand staircase in search for a jacket. Damian simply hurried after Dick and followed him into the kitchen. He was surprised to see Tim standing there, apparently helping Alfred make dinner. He was slicing up cucumbers and scraping them into a bowl, humming softly while doing so. 

Damian went over to steal a cucumber from the bowl and glimpsed a faint smile on Tim's face. Faint but genuine. Tim only shoved Damian away from the cucumbers.

He hummed a little louder when Alfred squeezed past Damian and set a bowl with tomatoes and told Tim to slice them up too. 

"Master Damian, perhaps you and Master Dick could be of some help and set the table?" Alfred asked, giving Damian a pointed look.

Tim finally glanced up to flash Dick a grin and kept humming tunelessly, a melody that Damian felt he recognized faintly, only looking back up when Dick rooted on the spot. 

"Is everything good?" he asked, his eyebrows drawing together.

Damian paused where he was holding a stack of plates and looked back to notice that Dick was, in fact, looking five seconds away from crying. He frowned and went back to stacking enough plates for everyone and then heading out to the dining room.

Dick wasn't far to follow with cups and silverware, still looking slightly shell-shocked.

"Richard, if something is bothering you--" Damian started.

"This is the first time I've heard him sing since he came back," Dick said in a hushed voice. 

His eyes were wet when they met Damian's.

"I could hardly call that _singing_ _,"_ Damian replied, feeling too out of his depth to have this conversation.

Dick chuckled. "It's-- this is nice."

He knew this wouldn't last. There would always be bad days, sure. But Damian found himself agreeing. 

Damian nodded. "Yes. Now I can finally get him to help me get revenge on Todd."

Dick let out a short laugh, then stopped himself and forced the smile away and the tension broke.

"Play nice," he warned.

"Tell that to Drake," Damian said. "He's the mastermind behind this."

Dick huffed a laugh and reached over to ruffle Damian's hair. This was nice and familiar. And Tim slowly getting better lightened the mood significantly.

**Author's Note:**

> [feel free to check out my tumbr](https://blas-ph-emy.tumblr.com/)


End file.
